


Just a Garden-Variety Haunt

by Guardian_Leonhart_Strife



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Cheesy, Cute, Friendship, Halloween, One Shot, Spooky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27317644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guardian_Leonhart_Strife/pseuds/Guardian_Leonhart_Strife
Summary: On Halloween night, Selphie, Quistis and Rinoa decide to go through Balamb Garden's "Haunted Halloween Experience" set up by the committee.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Just a Garden-Variety Haunt

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own the characters in this story. The characters are property of Square Enix.
> 
> Happy Halloween!
> 
> I just thought I'd throw up a Halloween one-shot I wrote a while ago in the spirit of Halloween. It's short, it's cheesy and it has absolutely nothing to do with any relationships, which feels weird to me, haha!
> 
> I hope you enjoy and thanks for reading!

A close-knit SeeD trio stood out in the vast fields that stretched between their Garden and the small city of Balamb. The ladies examined what lay before them in their own various ways, inspecting the entry point and what surely resided within while the smallest yet loudest among them whimpered helplessly at what was to come. 

“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” Selphie repeated, shifting her weight nervously back and forth between her feet, wrenching her fingers together in front of her chest. Wide, emerald eyes were locked on the path ahead of them where a train car’s back entrance was left open, spilling out darkness that mingled with the late hour’s surroundings. The other two admired the train like it was a perfectly normal thing to have parked in the grassy fields between Balamb’s school and the city further beyond.

“What is it Selphie?” Quistis asked, pinching the hinge of her glasses and tilting her head higher to inspect the shadows looming over the train’s roof.

“This is gonna ruin trains for me, you guys!” Selphie whined. She might have been disturbed by the train, but both of her friends wondered if it went a little deeper than just that.

“Then why’d you include it?” Rinoa asked with a breathy laugh. She flicked some of her thick, black hair over her shoulder, angling a smile down toward her worrying friend. Selphie hopped up and down in place, her hands flying out and fingers splayed in a fluster.

“I didn’t! I wanted to be one of the people who went through, so the planning and organizing was done by other members of the committee, not me!” she cried, a shiver running its course over her petite frame.

Quistis, used to her friend’s loud outbursts, ignored her protests. “Do they… start scaring us now, or when we walk though?” she asked vaguely, focusing above the roof as if knowing something was lurking up there, ready and waiting. Rinoa lifted her eyes about to respond, but Selphie’s abrupt squeal drew both her friends’ attention back onto her. Her feet were planted, fists balled up at her sides as she glared daggers into the darkened interior of the train.

“Someone did this on _purpose!_ They _wanted_ me to hate trains-!”

“Selphie-” Rinoa attempted to interject, but her friend only grew louder in anger.

“I’m gonna _kick their ass_ when I find out-!”

“Now, Selphie, this is all in good fun, remember?” Quistis chided, her instructor traits surfacing from the other woman’s use of foul language. She crossed her arms over her stomach, eying Selphie with a raised brow over the rim of her lenses. Selphie groaned, twisting her own arms over her chest in a childish show of defeat.

“ _Yeah_ fine. It’s… it’s for fun or… whatever,” she grumbled.

“There’s people in there,” Rinoa mentioned, pointing a finger through the dark doorway. Quistis and Selphie peered through, spotting the shadowed figures slumped over in a few seats inside. Selphie squealed again.

“Oooooh, I’m gonna _hate trains!_ I _loved_ trains and now I’m gonna _hate_ ‘em-!”

“I wonder how far it goes,” Rinoa interrupted, tilting to one side and searching the area around the entrance for answers. Nights around Balamb were pitch black, usually making the homely little town’s lights all the more piercing against the darkness that consumed the whole area. With the construction of the Garden committee’s “Haunted Halloween Experience” as they titled it, Rinoa found a lot of the soft lights normally seen from the city to be muted behind something. Just what exactly was used to create this ‘experience’ was anyone’s guess outside of the committee’s, which perked Rinoa’s excitement all the more. “Do we know anything about what to expect, aside from this train?”

“No,” Selphie groaned, kicking herself for not asking about it now. She would have argued against using the train if she knew about it, but _no!_ She wanted to be _surprised!_ Just her dumb luck.

“Well,” Quistis piped up, stepping over and placing her hands caringly on Selphie’s shoulders from behind. “The sooner we’re through, the sooner it’s over. Then we can wait at the end and watch others as they come out too, hm?” Selphie’s lips curled into a smile, her wide eyes looking up at her friend, begging her not to make empty promises. Quistis nodded, smiling down at the hopeful expression.

Selphie lunged up excitedly, throwing her friend’s hands off her shoulders when she punched a fist into the air. “Al- _right!_ Let’s _do_ this!”

“Remember, no weapons,” Quistis mentioned, reading the sign staked into the grass with “blood” scribbling out the list of rules for ‘those who dared to enter’. “No touching, no flashlights, no straying off the path and… no stopping?” she glanced back at the other two. “What does that mean?”

Selphie hiked up a shoulder, shrugging. “Maybe they think people will stop for a picnic or something. Or to pee.”

“Ew,” Rinoa giggled, curling her lip at the idea. Selphie turned toward her and shrugged again.

“I dunno, people are gross like that sometimes.”

“Are we supposed to run all the way through it then?” Isn’t that dangerous for anyone up ahead? Running around in darkness might result in crashing into others that aren’t visible.”

“I hope not,” Rinoa mumbled, glancing down at the heels she had foolishly decided to wear. She thought it would be more like a few dorm rooms that people converted so others could slowly creep through with occasional jump scares as they went by. She didn’t really think about how it was being built outside of Garden in the fields over the past few weeks.

Selphie pressed her fists against her hips defiantly. “We’ll do what we want! Run, hop, skip, take breaks, pee a little if we get scared, y’know? Whatever!” Quistis and Rinoa eyed their friend more closely.

“Do you need to go back and use the restroom, Selphie-?”

“No! I’m just _saying_ ,” she shrieked, rolling her eyes, “we’ll do it however the hell we wanna do it! Now, come _on!_ I wanna be there when Irvy walks out all freaked so I can poke fun at him for being a big ol’ weenie!” She cheered, latching onto her friends’ hands and pulling them up the couple of steps to the train car’s entrance. The others laughed as they were led forward, shaking their heads and smiling toward one another at Selphie’s antics.

The giddiness quickly died off when the three of them walked further into the train car.

Spiderwebs were hanging down from the entire ceiling, stretched around the backing of seats with various sizes of eight-legged creepy crawlies all over the place. A few of the forms they saw from outside near the entrance were dummies wrapped so tightly in the cotton webbing their features were obscured, no longer able to find anything recognizable about them anymore. Heavy, awkward breathing filled the train car, made both laughable and ominous by the masks that were causing the odd sound. People were in there with them, seated motionless or slumped over at an angle and waiting for them to come close enough to scare. The three women, who were high ranking SeeDs that dealt with far worse than this in the reality of their daily lives, felt a prickle of unease crawl up their spines though they’d never admit it out loud to anyone.

Selphie slipped herself to the middle position once they were forced into a single-file line to move through the walkway between the seats. Quistis took the lead, as she was known to do, ducking her head down to avoid the decor from catching onto the back of her hair where it was pinned up. Rinoa nibbled on her bottom lip nervously, both from the fear coiling up at the base of her stomach and also from fighting the urge to scare the petite woman cowering in front of her. She knew if she scared Selphie the woman would make it her mission throughout the entire length of this thing to get Rinoa back tenfold, but she still debated if she was ready for that kind of retaliation or not.

“Um,” Quistis muttered, clearing the nerves out of her throat immediately. “The rule about touching… does that apply to us, or to them?” she asked, her tone hushed.

“Both, maybe?” Rinoa whispered back her reply.

“Are they allowed to… grab us or push us, I mean?” Quistis questioned further over her shoulder, keeping an eye on where they were headed for any sign of movement.

“Anybody grabs me and I’m decking ‘em. Fuck the rules-” Selphie warned in a clear, threatening tone.

“Selphie-” Quistis scolded, still keeping her voice low.

“Nuh uh! They don’t want me touchin’ them, then they don’t get to touch me. It goes both ways is what I mean.”

“I think that’s sort of the standard for these things,” Rinoa mentioned, agreeing with Selphie. She was glad she hadn’t acted on her urges to tease her friend, otherwise she’d have a swelling bruise right about now. Quistis hummed, turning her focus forward once more.

They got to the halfway mark, avoiding the ghoulish surroundings as they passed at a slow, steady pace. Up ahead, they could see another door was opened for the front of the car where they would exit, but pure darkness refused to expose anything beyond the door. When Quistis shifted her head to the side to mention this, she caught movement from behind them out of the corner of her eye. 

Quistis spun around in place, her reflexes already reaching to her hip where her weapon was usually hitched at her side. Selphie and Rinoa twisted around as well, watching the back door swing closed with a loud slam. A hollow echo vibrated in their ears and the metallic surface beneath their feet. Webbed figures they assumed had been props stretched their arms out wide, moaning and groaning as they turned from the door they shut and started staggering up the aisle toward the women. Selphie was the first to scream, the shrill pitch hurting the web-wrapped figures’ ears who clutched at their heads for a moment before they recovered and continued to awkwardly approach. Rinoa burst out into laughter, pressing her hand against Selphie’s shoulder to urge both women in front of her to hurry out. 

“C-Come on, we gotta run!” she tried to play along through her amusement, catching Quistis’s smirk as she latched her fingers around Selphie’s wrist and started pulling her toward the opposite door. Quistis stopped short suddenly, both Selphie and Rinoa bumping into her back. Peering around their leader, they all saw two more figures scrambling in their seats a little ways ahead of where they were.

“Go go go go go go go go go go go!” Selphie screeched, shoving with all of her strength against Quistis, who stumbled forward but eventually broke out into the run her friend was violently demanding. Rinoa felt the death-grip of Selphie’s hand, laughing openly at the figures who sat in place and shuffled their arms all around to make it seem like they were stuck but trying to escape. 

The trio spilled out of the train, sailing over the steps and landing gracefully on their feet outside. Quistis pursed her lips to keep herself from laughing while Rinoa was busy prying Selphie's fingers from around her own. She hid none of her amusement toward Selphie at her friend’s expense. Selphie’s chest was rising and falling as if she had just ran the biggest marathon of her life. She gaped back at the train’s opening just waiting for the creepy people to stumble their way out and continue to chase after them. Rinoa eventually gave up on freeing her hand, shaking the girl’s arm up and down instead to get her attention.

“C-Come on, Selphie. We-We have to keep going! No stopping, remember?” She mentioned, her chuckles breaking up her wording. 

There was a loud churn of a motor, then silence. It quieted the three of them down when it happened a second time, the women glancing around in search of where the noise was coming from. Churning metal finally caught, the wail of a chainsaw fully throttled screaming at them from just beyond the train. Selphie bolted, abandoning Rinoa’s hand and tearing by both of her friends blindly. The silhouette of the weapon emerged from over the top of what looked like tall grass on their left, which Quistis studied for a second as she staggered backwards. Rinoa missed it entirely, already chasing down their fleeing, panicked friend. 

“Selphie, wait! Wait for us!” 

Lighting had been placed to barely illuminate the area enough to see a dark path. It twisted and curved between barriers made of something, but Rinoa wasn’t paying close enough attention to see what it was. She was too busy dashing down what parts she could see and worrying over her ankles spraining at any moment from being in heels. Quistis was the one who should’ve chased Selphie down, not her, she realized a little too late. She called out to her friend every few seconds, but there was no sign of Selphie either hearing her or even still being on the path. Rinoa started to slow her pace, waiting for Quistis to catch up and also sparing herself from tumbling over. “Sel-phie!” she yelled as loudly as she could before pausing, then sighed out her breath when nothing was heard in response.

“Quistis!” she tried, turning back to look the way she came. “I lost her!” Rinoa stopped walking, crossing her arms over her stomach and taking a second to catch her breath. Her foot tapped against the ground, which she studied when she realized she wasn’t standing on grass. Stooping down, she ran her hand across the surface, lifted her palm and rubbed her fingers together. It was dirt, so much of it that the grass couldn’t even poke through. Standing up and rubbing her hand against the side of her dress, Rinoa analyzed the barriers with narrowed, curious eyes. She brushed her hand across what she thought had been tall grass, but felt sturdy stalks with corn husks fluttering in the breeze. “Corn?” she mumbled aloud, wondering why the committee chose corn of all things. She tapped the tip of her shoe against the base of it, thudding lightly where large pots held the plants.

A shrill scream pierced the night, spinning Rinoa around at the sound of Selphie, her lost friend.

“Rinoa-” Quistis’s voice came from over her shoulder, the woman finally catching up to her. “Where’s Selphie?”

“That was her scream, come on,” Rinoa blurted, tearing off ahead of Quistis whose footsteps kept pace with her from behind. “Did she get scared again, maybe?”

“I don’t know, but… the boundary walls… it’s corn.”

“I know,” Rinoa mentioned, glancing toward Quistis when the woman picked up her own pace to run evenly with her. “They’re in big pots.”

“Corn… it’s foreign here…local wildlife might be attracted to it.”

“What?!”

“This is dangerous.” Quistis stated. Tilting her chin forward, she gestured ahead of where they were running side-by-side. “Selphie might’ve been scared, but… she might…” she trailed off, the warning in her glance was enough for Rinoa to understand what she was hesitant to say.

“But Squall had to approve all of this. He wouldn’t, if-”

“He may not have considered what it would do; what it could draw out of the forests or the fields.”

They stared at one another for a second before pushing themselves a little harder, curling along the path to hurry and find their missing friend. They’d barely made it beyond the train with how many twists and turns they took on their path. The chainsaw used near the entrance to prompt people into moving was still close enough for the two of them to hear, along with the screams of other people which raised the hair on the back of both women's necks. Their friend was nowhere to be found, and with Quistis and Rinoa both calling out to her repeatedly they expected to hear something from her by then. Their nerves were rising with every second Selphie continued to be lost, knowing that they had all agreed to leave their weapons back in their rooms to avoid the urge to use them when playfully threatened by innocent, dressed-up students and volunteers.

Selphie didn’t have anything to defend herself if fiends managed to get to her in the apparent corn maze. Not even her friends.

The further they ran, the more active the scares became through the corn. Arms started reaching out toward them, clad in farmers’ clothing or drenched in sticky, fake blood that dripped from rubber nubs that used to be fingers. More of the figures started to show themselves as they went deeper, from limbs, to shoulders, to heads or full torsos. When legs started stepping out from the barriers as well, Quistis and Rinoa were exhausted. The pace they were frantically keeping to find their friend had tired them out, and both women were pushing themselves well beyond what their lungs were capable of handling. 

Eventually, Rinoa wrapped her fingers around Quistis’s forearm and slowed, being the one to force them into taking a short break. Quistis slowed down willingly, but kept the fearful look in her eyes as she scanned the way forward in the slim chance of finding their friend. Rinoa leaned forward when they came to a stop, pressing her palms against her knees and heaving air greedily into her lungs.

“Should… I… call… Squall?” 

Quistis bounced her palm off of her own forehead, then reached into her front pocket. She pulled her phone free and quickly tapped a few fingers on the screen. When she pressed the device against her ear and saw Rinoa staring up at her curiously, Quistis rolled her eyes at herself.

“Selphie,” she answered the unspoken question, to which Rinoa nodded. Right, why hadn’t they thought of that sooner? A commotion from the corn husks beside Quistis drew Rinoa’s attention toward it. Out came a clawed hand drenched in muck and reaching out directly in front of Quistis’s eyes. Quistis held up a finger where the mangled face was about to emerge without looking. “Quiet.” she said calmly, pulling her arm back to rest comfortably across her stomach. When the gorey mask turned toward Rinoa, she pushed herself upright and offered an apologetic smile.

“It’s an emergency-”

“Wait,” Quistis snapped, pulling the phone away from her own ear. She glared up ahead, and a faint jingle was heard being carried on the breeze. It was Selphie’s ringtone.

“Selphie?!” Both women yelled, taking off at a sprint again toward the sound of their friend’s phone. “Selphie!”

They rounded corner after corner, memorizing the layout for what it so obviously was, predicting where the turns would come next. The path literally zig-zagged back and forth to keep the space needed for this project to a minimum, but it also made the women’s lives hell while they raced back and forth in their search. Quistis kept redialing Selphie’s number so the ringtone could guide them closer to where they hoped their friend was. She wasn’t answering though, which was more than a little concerning. 

At last, they took a corner and found a soft glow settled between some of the stalks of corn at the opposite side. Rinoa bent down and scooped up the phone, checking it over for any signs of what might’ve happened. “She lost it?” Rinoa asked, shaking her head when she failed to see any blood or damage to the device.

“Selphie!” Quistis hollered out as loud as she could.

_“Hey! Hey- help!”_

The women glanced at one another with pinched brows, hearing a voice that was nothing like Selphie’s. Still, they raced onwards, catching onto how the people that were popping out of the boundaries had all but vanished. Deep laughter began to slowly fade in from where they were headed until the pair emerged where the tall corn ended and the lighting used for the whole maze was no longer blocked off.

“Help… get this… little… monster off of me!” Irvine cackled, his voice muffled behind both of his arms over his head. He was sprawled out on the ground, covering his face and laughing breathlessly at the tiny woman sitting on his chest who was repeatedly smacking everywhere she could on his upper body.

“You… you-you… you… _meanie!_ ” Selphie wailed, punching and slapping all along the man’s arms and torso where he wasn’t protected.

“Selphie!” both women called out, jogging over and taking each of her arms, hauling her up off of Irvine’s body. Irvine wrapped his limbs around his stomach, curling to one side and continuing to laugh uncontrollably. By removing the coverage from his face, Quistis and Rinoa saw how he had some gorey makeup on parts of it. Not a lot, but some, which Rinoa questioned him about while Quistis gently scolded Selphie for scaring them.

“It… it’s her fault! She came out of nowhere! Just barrelled right into me from through the corn when I was getting ready!”

“ _You’re_ one of the volunteers?” Rinoa asked, shocked. Irvine slowly regained control over himself and climbed back onto his feet. He flashed a bright grin toward the trio while brushing the dirt off of his duster.

“Of course I am. A chance to scare you four? We all signed up for it!”

“We _all?_ ” Quistis questioned.

“You _four?_ ” Rinoa asked over the other woman. Irvine nodded, plucking his hat from off of the ground and tilting the brim down to cover his eyes.

“Yes. To both questions,” he replied cheekily. Selphie refused to be ignored, yelling over the conversation again.

“I can’t _believe_ you let them use trains, Irvy! What is _wrong_ with you?!” Selphie cried, storming up to the man and slamming her fists onto her hips. She glared up into the shadow over his eyes angrily.

Irvine smirked coyly down at the angry woman. “And I can’t believe you didn’t follow the rules, young lady. Running _through_ the corn instead of staying on the path,” he tsked a few times, hitching his own hands onto his hips and shaking his head. “Shame on you.”

“What ‘four’ are you talking about? Us three and who else?” Rinoa asked, choking back a giggle at how the two of them looked. It would only turn Selphie’s anger towards her if she mentioned anything about it, and that was the last thing Rinoa wanted right now. Irvine waved a finger around.

“You three and Squall.”

“ _Squall’s_ gunna do it?!” Selphie gawked, cheering up in the blink of an eye.

“Ah,” Quistis said, her arms crossing over her stomach. “So everyone signed up as volunteers to see us suffer, the Headmaster included.”

“Y-yeah,” Irvine quickly agreed with Quistis, but turned his attention down toward Selphie, shaking his head again. “And no, Squall did it already.”

“Aw, man!” Selphie pouted.

“Where is he?” Rinoa asked, glancing around the opened area where others from Garden or Balamb were standing around talking about the whole experience. Funny how none of them thought to jump in and help Irvine out, she thought to herself.

“He’s headed back to Garden. Had to take Seifer to the infirmary.” The trio stared at Irvine, eyes wide. Irvine shrugged. “Guess Seifer ignored the whole ‘no touching’ thing. Squall broke his nose, then Seifer punched him in the eye, and so on,” he mentioned casually, twirling a finger in the air. Sharing a laugh slowly eased everyone’s frazzled nerves as they imagined the encounter.

After Quistis ensured the corn maze was in fact safe from fiends in the area and several more bouts of high-pitched accusations and disapproval from Selphie, the girls left Irvine to finish getting ready. Rinoa hung the heels over her arm where they crossed along her midriff, smirking at her friends. Selphie was begging them to go back through with her again so she could actually experience it like she was supposed to. That, and because she wanted to find Irvine’s hiding spot in the corn and scare him back. Quistis gently coaxed her away from that idea though, walking them further and further away from the ominous train car and back toward Balamb Garden.

“Don’t you want to see how Squall and Seifer are?”

“Yeah,” Rinoa gently agreed, “you want to see who won, don’t you?” Selphie seemed interested, but still kept glancing out of the corner of her eye toward the maze. Quistis kept tugging on the thread.

“Plus, we haven’t even gone through everything set up in the Quads.”

“Right,” Rinoa agreed with a grin, “there’s bobbing for apples, mummy races, there’s-”

“There’s hot cocoa!” Selphie squealed, her eyes widening as she glanced between both of her friends. “ _Flavored_ hot cocoa, I almost forgot!”

“Oh, uh… yes, there’s that-”

“Come on! Come on! I wanna try all the flavors! I think I saw there were, like, thirty or something!”

“That’s an awful lot of sugar-”

“It’s Halloween!” Selphie argued, pulling her friends by their wrists and taking the lead. “Halloween’s all about sugar!”

Quistis and Rinoa tried to correct her line of thinking, but Selphie was too busy rushing them through the crowds back to where sugary-sweetness was laying in wait.


End file.
